The Powers of the Judiciary with Vladimir Gagic (Part 2)

Published Jun 14, 2025, 2:00 PM

Today’s guest, Vladimir Gagic, is an independent nonpartisan political and legal commentator, former lawyer, and social media influencer found online at @ToxikVlad

In the second half of the show, we discuss the justification for the legal attacks on Trump and from Trump and examine the merits of the cases. We also discuss the powers of the judiciary in this country.

Keep on riding with it, says. We continue to broadcast the balance and defend the discourse from the Hip Hop Weekly studios. Welcome back to Civic Sipher. I am your host Rams's job. Big shout out to q Ward, who is in Los Angeles right now for obvious reasons, and we are going to get him back safe and sound to the studio soon enough to share all that he has learned out there. But in the meantime, we have a special guest in the studio. He is the one and only Vladimir Gajic. He's an independent, nonpartisan political and legal commentator, a former lawyer, and social media influencer who can be found online at Toxic Vlad that is t xik v Lad. Thank you for sticking around for the second half. First, thank you for having so stay tuned, because we're going to be talking about some of the things going on in the country insofar as the president is concerned and the courts, so the executive branch versus the judicial branch, and kind of where things live. Before we move any further, it is time to Baba become a better ally Baba. On today's Baba, we want you to check out NBJC dot org again NBJC dot org. Founded in two thousand and three, NBJC initially sought to address specific sets of challenges facing the black community, the erasure of black, queer, trans, and gender expansive people, and a political push to define marriage in ways that deny black LGBTQ plus slash SGL people recognition and access to economic, social, and political rights. Having faithfully and successfully fulfilled its original purpose, NBJC has rebranded henceforth the NBJC is the National Black Justice Collective. NBJC has accepted the charge to leave Black families and strengthening the bonds and bridging the gaps between the movements for racial justice and LGBTQ equality. NBJC connects to grasstops to the grassroots authentically. The organization is equipped with targeted messaging and data that brings voice, builds networks, and takes action on behalf of the black LGBTQ, slash SGL community. Nbjc strategic advocacy efforts have historically focused on the impact of federal public policy on the lives of black LGBTQ, SGL people and Black America as a whole. The organization's cornerstone issues are health and wellness hib awareness and prevention, safe and inclusive schools, employment, non discrimination, relationship and family recognition, anti violence, and economic justice. Again wants you to check them out at NBJC dot org. And this is my personal co sign for these folks. Doctor Johns, who is the CEO of the NBJC, is a dear, dear friend, has become a dear friend of the show in recent months, and we really do believe in the work that he's done. Actually, both Q and I got a chance to hang out with him in Los Angeles, and we really do want you to check out the work that he's doing NBJC dot org. All right, mister Gagik, So we were talking about not being a fan of Judges, not being a fan of Democrats, which is fair a lot of folks that have gripes of Democrats. Would you say.

It was a Democrats behavior the reaction to his election, not the Democratic Party.

Sure, okay, okay, thanks for sharing that up. Thank you for clearing that up. But do you think that many people that come on this show, and we don't want to be an echo chamber, but many people that come on this show will say loudly and indeed I might be one of those people myself, and in fact, I think I would be that these times are unprecedented. This president is anti democratic and is not beholden to the entire country really just one specific facet of the country. There's a lot of people who it doesn't affect them one way or the other. So maybe this strong man sort of whatever appeals to them, because ultimately, if it doesn't affect them negatively, and it might affect them positively, they don't have a dog in fight. But this president has at least it feels like this president really doesn't care about anybody else. And this coming from a person and people that come on the show course that have seen attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, and when you think about the language there, that feels crazy to a lot of people because you would imagine that this country stands for diversity, equity, and inclusion at the heart of this country, at the heart of humanity. Lot of people would argue that this president has fired people who considers dei hires. He's defunded institutions that affirm black history. He has defunded institutions that celebrate black achievements, which are rare and unique in the story of this country and often overlooked or buried and so forth. And these attacks feel very pointed and very personal to a lot of people, and a lot of people again that come on this show feel that way. And he's doing this all legally. Would you argue that that is imagined and whole are in part, or that people are being extra sensitive to this president, or would you argue that, no, these are valid criticisms of this administration. This is unprecedented, and this president is changing the culture of this country to suit one specific fact of the country and more or less enshrining that into law.

What would be your position, I would say, any criticisms that a person has is a legitimate criticism. And if you're asking me, is it legitimate criticisms for some of the say African American or gay or whatever, to have this particular criticism of the president? Is that valid? I've never walked in those shoes. You can't ask me to to know what's in somebody's in somebody's thought process, right. I will say this though, I mean, you're talking about diversity, equity, and inclusion. I think those are viral, valid points. I think talk about the founding fathers, there's a there are big, big fans of the Roman Empire, and if you know Roman history, the Romans were Their whole thing was diversity, right, That's why the Roman Empire lasted for so long. It was actually had an Arab imperor at one point. And those are fair points. I will just say from my perspective. For somebody with the first name Vladimir, when every single thing you hear out of the Democratic Party is how evil Russia is and how evil Vladimir Putin is, it starts to wear thin when you start hearing the other side about, oh, the Republicans or this the Republicans or that, or Donald Trump is this because the republic you know what, the Republicans were doing it just as much as the Democrats hating on Russia, trying to provoke a nuclear war with Russia for some god forsaken reason I don't know why. And then they talk about that the pe tape and all this stuff that Donald Trump did when he was in Russia and Putin has all this.

Sort of stuff.

We heard that for sixty eight six years and I was personally affected by it.

I was assaulted in court.

I think one of the contributing factors, if not the proximate cause is my name. My experiences of the past three and four years, six years since twenty eighteen in Phoenix, Arizona have been directly caused by hatred of Slavs, of Slavophobia, of xenophobia, of anything to do with Eastern Europe, anything to do with my name. And that's been directly caused primarily by the Democratic Party, but also certainly the Republican Party.

So fear mongering, fear mongering, bread baiting is the word, red baiting.

Just like Joseph McCarthy back in the day, they're bringing up people are bringing back, Oh, how would Ronald Reagan react to Donald Trump or being called by Vladimir Putin that sort of stuff.

Okay, So you one of the things that I did read about you is you were disbarred, the facto disbarred, This facto disbarred. Okay, So talk to us about what that means and what happened to you as a result of this.

So for twenty years, I'm a lawyer with zero history of any sort. I was in the Marine Corps. I'm an honorably discharge you US Marine. I was a reservist for twenty years. I have no discipline. And I'm a public defender. You know, public defender is I basically work for free. I get I have to defend the people in court who have nor so poor they have no they can't hire their own lawyer. Right for all sorts of charges, from DUIs to whatever else. Right, I'm a public defender. I get a client, his name is Jamal Pennington, who's innocent. I don't think he's innocent at the time, and he's charged with sex trafficking basically being a pimp. Turns out the police reframing him. And keep in mind, I am not some radical left winger. I am not a member of Atifa. I'm not a member of the Communist Party.

I am a normal.

Tax paying citizen who's never been in trouble with the law and never been in trouble with the state bar. I don't even speed, I don't do drugs. I don't do any of those things. And when I point out the fact that the police falsified a DNA search warrant for my client's DNA, they just falsified a search warrant. They just made up the evidence to get a search warrant to test his DNA. It's not even a contested issue. It's not one of those things like, oh, maybe they did, maybe they didn't.

No, they did. Everybody knows it.

The case agent bribed one of my witnesses, a defense witness who says my client is completely innocent in somebody else. The case agent, meaning the detective who's running the case in secret, gave that witness money to change your testimony. And I know that not just because she told me that and because she told my private investigator that. I know that because I actually have the Facebook records proving it. I actually have Facebook written proof that the Phoenix Police Department agent in charge of a case was bribing and tampering with my witness to change your testimony.

So how did this end up with you?

Well, I'm a public defender, so I bring it.

So what do you think of the first defense attorney's supposed to do in those circumstances. You bring it to the court, right, And so guess what happens When I bring.

It to the court.

They side with the police.

The judge who's a Democrat. They're all democrats, All these judges are Democrats. He files a bar complaint against me based on what he says I'm being conspiracy theory, that sort of stuff. Keep in mind, I have this in writing. I have it in writing. I have zero history. He says, I have a personal grudge against the prosecutor. So the same prosecutor who called me a sexist just randomly started calling me a sexist and angry and started resorting to ethnic tropes, and the judges were going along with it. I asked then DOUBLEACP for help. Guess who then Double ACP sides with. They sided with the prosecutor. Hmm, because they have zero interest, zero interest in fighting systematic racism.

Zero interest.

That's a bold claim.

It is a fact, and I will prove every single word of it. And so what happens is the bar, the judge files a bar complain against me, the state bar gives me a year's suspension without a hearing. Every lawyer in America, it's ordered by the Supreme Court of the United States.

Every lawyer.

Before they take your license, it's just like taking your kids. They must give you a hearing. They must give you a hearing to be proven by clear and convincing evidence. So it is harder for the state to take your child from you than it should be to suspend a lawyer. But guess who happens to be the only lawyer in the history of Arizona who's lost his license without hearing, without being defaulted, or without consent. There's only one Guess who that lawyer happens to be. That's me.

That's me.

Okay, Well, I see why there's a lot to be frustrated about there, and I see why, you know, the pivot to you know, social media activism and those sorts of things. Now, one of the things that I've learned is that and maybe this is maybe these things are not connected, but I seem to recall I have a friend who's a lawyer in New York City, brilliant lawyer, went to the London School of Economics, THENTO Harvard Law you know, and her firm had to change. I couldn't get into it. I couldn't give you the details of it because I'm not a lawyer, and lawyers speak a different language. But her firm had to change some fundamental elements about either their culture or whatever it was, in order to remain compliant with the current administration's politics, and in doing so they would be able to retain certain contract government contracts and represent the interests of the government or something like that. And if they did not make these changes and align themselves politically, I guess that would be the right way to say it with Donald Trump two point zero, other than they would lose out on this significant amount of business. And I was told by her that that maneuver is unprecedented, not unlike many other maneuvers, like, hey, your funding is done. We're just going to take away your funding. What they're doing with Harvard, what they're doing with Columbia, all these other places.

Do you know what you're talking about?

Do you feel like these things are connected?

Like no, I think what you're talking about, and I think what you're talking about in particular. And it's something that made me very upset because when when Donald Trump was running, his whole kind of thing was free speech, like liberty comes first. You're right, because he's he put himself out there, and I think legitimately as a victim of of of prosecutors and cops gone wrong, gone rogue, particularly the FBI agents.

He was the victim. Donald Trump was the victim of that.

Yeah, because he was talking about the classified documents case and the prosecute. You know the classified documents case in Yes, in mar Alago, and there were a number of prosecutions, and there was also the one in New York. And the ultimate point, you have prosecutors like the criminal system has been weaponized. That was kind of his whole pitch.

Do you think that that's valid that he's saying that, Well, I'm just telling you what I interpreted.

The way I interpreted was that it was a criminal system. And also the state bar was weaponized against lawyers who were representing his causes in state court after the twenty twenty election, Right.

That's okay, So we got to you got to help me because I'm sure that now that we're here a lot of folks might want to hear so we don't have to dwell on it too much. But so, there was a phone call that Donald Trump made in Georgia saying to it might have been the election commissioner the I forget the name of the person, but some individual who was in charge of the election the twenty twenty election, and he says, hey, I need you to get me. It might have been thirty thousand votes. It's like, I need you to get me thirty thousand votes. I don't know that that's the number, so please fact check me if you're hearing my voice. But Donald Trump said that on that phone call, the call was recorded, was least to everybody. We heard him say that. And then there was the election interference case, right, which was that in Georgia, the one where the mugshot famously came from. Fannie Willis prosecuted him. But we heard him say that. Donald Trump has famously had many accusers of him being let's put it kindly and say, sexually inappropriate. And he himself has said, you know, I love going backstage in my past. I'm making I'm making a point here, I'm making a pointer. But he himself, he we heard him before the first election say, you know, when you're a celebrity, you can just walk up to him and grab him by the P word. He said that, right, and then he loses in court to Egene Carroll. He found he's found liable or something. He's somehow he's an adjudicated rapist. This is what the term, this is what the term that.

Is now adjudicated Civilly response.

Civilly response, Well, we'll go with that, and we'll go with that, okay, mar A lago those documents. Joe Biden also famously had documents in his garage, right, and Donald Trump had documents in his garage and the government said, that's not supposed to happen. You're not supposed to have those docus certainly not supposed to have next to the toilet. And then there was a case there, and then Donald Trump's position was the criminal justice system is being weaponized against me. And that is the position that you think is valid for him to do.

I think what I'm saying is that's the position he was arguing. Okay, And if I can just tell you what was saying, that's the position he was arguing. Corollary to that was his position that Republicans are the party of free speech. Okay, Corollary to that, And if you listen Tucker Carlson, he said something that I think resonated with me is you only get in trouble when you tell the truth. You never get in trouble when you lie, because lives don't matter. It's the truth that matters. So my assumption was when Donald Trump and he actually signed an executive order saying that during the past four years during the Biden presidency, any acts by the federal government to limit the citizen's right to free speech will be punished. The federal government has no right, or no power, or no immunity to limit the free speech of private citizens.

I was ecstatic with joy.

I was absolutely jumping through the roof and joy because I've been the victim of federal I've had the FBI at my house because of what I.

Tell sure, I'm very upsetive.

While Biden was president, all right, while Democrats were running, while all these free speech, all these Party of Equity and all this fairness and blah blah blah blah, they sent the FBI out at my house in secret because I was telling fact jokes on X about the kind of attorney. But anyway, so when he goes, when he starts deporting these protesters at Columbia, I forget the names exactly, but the one kid.

What was his name?

I think my mood, yes, yeah, I can't tell you how disappointed I was.

I can't tell you.

I wasn't crying, but I was pretty close to it because I felt like that was a betrial, because I felt like, finally we had a president who actually really really did believe in the first Amendment, really really did believe.

In free spece.

But does this not make my point that the point I made earlier where Donald Trump has shown that he is not the president. I mean, while he technically is the president of the United States of America, in terms of the people, he's the president of some people.

He won the vote, well, then that's all that matters.

But some people he's acting on their behalf and other people.

So put up somebody against them, put up a better candidate. It's very very simple, have a p primary, have a candidate who actually goes to the primary. The Democrats rigged twenty sixteen, so so Bernie Sanders, there's no doubt about that.

That I know.

You then can't be complaining all the other guys an anti Democrat when you don't even have a primary to put us up the candidate that the people actually want to win. That party has forsaked and for they're done saying all the other guys are anti Democrats. They've lost that.

Right, Well, how about this for the people that are going to compare apples to apples, Right when you look at a Joe Biden, a Joe Biden was not to the degree that Trump is anti all of us.

I disagree with that fundamentally.

Obama do the same thing. I'd go back as far as Clinton, because that's as far as I've been like kind of politically aware. But I'd throw George Bush Junior in there as well.

As far as which category, in which.

Category Democrats are part of this country too, Donald.

Trump, George W. Bush, the Patriots, the Patriot Act guy, the guy who started a war over a lie and killed ten thousand Americans and his father, No, no, no, George W. Bush who invaded Iraq and killed how many iraqis that's fair, fairpoint. Okay, However, Donald Trump, relative to all of them, has famously been very you know, uh, it's almost like a witch hunt on Democrats. Everything in his social media posts as Democrats did this, that and the third.

And you're out of time. Twice we're out of time. So obviously we have to have you back up again because this is a spirited conversation. I certainly do appreciate your time, because this is something that's really necessary. You know. Obviously you said you're an independent, and we've had, you know, people who fundamentally disagree with everything that we leave on this show. But you know, there are people with different perspectives and they're all valid. We believe in that, even if our president doesn't. So again, I want to thank you for your time. Once again, our guest has been Vladimir Gagic, an independent, nonpartisan political and legal commentator, form a lawyer, and social media influencer who can be found online at Toxic Vlad That is at t XI k V l A D. Be sure to follow us on all social media at Civic Cipher. You can hit civic cipher dot com and make a donation to support the show. The show grows with your support, so keep helping us grow. You can find me on all social media at Rams's job. Q I am q ward and until next week, y'all Peace,

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